Read Great Pacific War: A History of the American-Japanese Campaign of 1931-33 Online
Authors: Hector C. Bywater
Great Pacific War: A History of the American-Japanese Campaign of 1931-33 (33 page)
Now that peace has been re-established on a sound and apparently permanent basis, the historian may be permitted to marvel at the folly of Japan in wantonly attacking a country with whom she had no real cause for enmity, and whose friendship was, indeed, essential to her own welfare. As a result of this unprovoked conflict, Japan was brought to the verge of ruin, nor is it conceivable that she will regain her former status as a first-rank Power during the present generation.
If the United States emerged victorious from the fray, it cannot be said that she derived any substantial benefit beyond the elimination of that menace of war which had been for many years a perpetual source of anxiety to her statesmen. Her shipping trade was virtually destroyed, and as yet it shows no sign of recovery. The enormous expenditure in which she had been involved left its inevitable aftermath of high taxation and consequent social unrest. War is never a paying proposition from any national point of view, and the great conflict of which the salient phases are described in the foregoing pages has proved, in its material aspects at least, scarcely less disastrous to victors than to vanquished.
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[1]
Kaikyo
is Japanese for strait.
[2]
At this period the
Utah
and
Arkansas
were absent from the fleet undergoing repairs in home yards.
[3]
It is pertinent to recall that Admiral Jellicoe, when commanding the British Grand Fleet in the World War, was at one period misled by similar rumours into a belief that the Germans had re-armed their 12-inch gun battleships with 14-inch artillery, though the technical difficulties of making such a change would have been well-nigh insuperable. Needless to say, the rumours eventually proved to be unfounded.
[4]
The
Japanese
Fleet
in
the
American
War
, by Nakabashi Rokuro. Seikyo-sha Publishing Office, Tokyo, 1933.
[5]
It is of great interest to observe how closely these revelations coincide with the conclusions reached by the American naval strategists who had mapped out the plan of campaign, piecing scattered fragments of evidence into a theory that events confirmed in the minutest particular.
[6]
This, of course, was the “scarecrow squadron” on its way back to Angaur, making a wide
detour
to the east, as instructed.
[7]
The twelve foregoing ships were all of the new 10,000-ton class, built from 1925-26 onward.
[8]
These three were old armoured cruisers, but still good for about nineteen knots.
[9]
A new vessel, named after the
Curtiss
sunk at the battle of Lubang in March, 1931 (
vide
Chapter II).
[10]
Being merely secured to a ring on the upper deck, the cage masts in the American ships were liable to fall if the deck in their vicinity was damaged by shell fire, and several did so fall, in some cases with disastrous results.
[11]
“Extracts from a Naval Officer’s Diary,” by Quincy A. Elmer.
Atlantic
Monthly
, May, 1934.